Toei Animation has been making magical girl anime since Sally the Witch in 1966 – and TV Asahi (previously known as Nihon Educational Television, or NET) has been airing these shows for just as long. Sally the Witch, for the uninitiated, is largely considered the first animated magical girl series. (Himitsu no Akko-chan preceded it as a manga first serialized in 1962, but it would not be adapted into an anime until 1969. Yes, Toei did that one too.)

Inextricably linked, Toei and TV Asahi have brought the world far too many magical girl shows to recount here, although some of the more popular ones include Cutie Honey, Sailor Moon, and Ojamajo Doremi. By the time the 21st century hit, Toei was no stranger to the world of mahou shoujo and its sister concepts. Witches from another world? Androids? A team of Super Sentai-esque magical warriors? Together, Toei and TV Asahi had been there and done that.

So they were looking for something a little different for 2004. Ojamajo Doremi had been highly successful in the 8:30am Sunday time slot, so perhaps returning to magical girls after the then-currently airing (and underperforming) historical romance Ashita no Nadja would be a decent idea. This new series would be directed by Daisuke Nishio of Dragon Ball Z fame, and feature characters designed by Akira Inagami. Notably, this would be Inagami’s first shot at character design – his background includes key animation in Dragon Ball Z and directing some episodes of Ojamajo Doremi.

Takashi Washio was chosen to produce this new series. He had no prior experience working on a girls’ series, as the biggest credit to his name up to this point was assistant director on One Piece. Washio is the one credited for coming up with the first seeds of Toei’s new show. There was no real difference between the way girls and boys acted when they were very young, he noticed. Both girls and boys want to save the world. Both girls and boys like action. Transforming heroines had been very popular in the past, but why not throw in something more? In his notes for laying the groundwork of the series, Washio said one of his most popular and oft-quoted lines: “｢女の子だって暴れたい｣” – “Even girls want to rampage.”

With that idea in mind, Pretty Cure was born.

The earliest concept sketches that have been published have always shown two heroines, so this seems to have been a plan from very early on. They’re even called Black and White in the above photo, so the yin & yang motif was codified as well. By emphasizing black and white, night and day, and yin and yang, the new show would be a departure not only from team based series like Sailor Moon and Doremi, but also from the earliest works in the genre which tended to focus on a single character.

The name of the show would emphasize this as well: Futari wa Pretty Cure, where Futari means, specifically, “Two people”. It’s not just “We are Pretty Cure,” or even “Together we are Pretty Cure” – it’s “The two of us are Pretty Cure.”

The two characters were given outfits that would hark back to the feminine designs of the magical girls that had come before, but tweaked for function over flash. The outfits had to be breathable and built for rough action. They were given flat boots, rather than high heels, to show that girls could stand “on their own two feet” without outside help. Washio wanted to make clear that there would be no male helper – no Tuxedo Mask. The two girls would be able to accomplish everything by themselves.

After much trial and error, the two characters began to take shape into the two heroines we know today, the ones who would eventually be household names among young girls across Japan. There was the sporty Nagisa Misumi as Cure Black, and bookish Honoka Yukishiro as Cure White. Notably, neither of these two characters’ main interests – sports or science – are seen as stereotypically feminine interests. Honoka was even given thicker eyebrows than most of the other girls in the show, specifically to point out that one need not follow typical rules of femininity to be a Precure. These characters were, from the very start, designed to challenge assumptions and subvert expectations.

Nagisa/Cure Black would be voiced by Honna Youko, who before this was perhaps most famously known as providing the voice of the main character in Studio Ghibli’s film Whisper of the Heart – and yes, that is her singing Country Roads. Meanwhile, Honoka/Cure White would be voiced by Yukana. Yukana has a wide variety of credits to her name – too many to list here – but long term magical girl fans may be familiar with Meiling Li in Cardcaptor Sakura. Apparently each voice actor originally auditioned to play the other Cure than who they ended up being, as difficult as that is to imagine today. Then they swapped positions during the audition, and things fell into place.

The series was given a pounding theme song, DANZEN! Futari wa Pretty Cure, sung by Mayumi Gojo. If it sounds vaguely like the opening to Three-Eyed One, it’s because the two songs share a composer, Yasuo Kosugi. More on the song and the opening will come in a later update.

And so, on February 1, 2004, at 8:30am on TV Asahi, this new experiment went live. Would it be a hit? A failure? Perhaps something in-between?

It was too early to tell, but perhaps some of people tuning in that day remember when they saw the start of something special.

NEXT TIME: DANZEN! A Look at the Opening and Theme Song of Futari wa Pretty Cure

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References and Resources:

Futari wa Precure Sketch
Settai Dreams
ANN Encyclopedia
Mahou Profile by ErynCerise
Japanese Wikipedia (thank you Google Translate)
Various interviews with the staff that I’ve read over the years – I’ve been a poor researcher and have lost track of them, but when I find them again I’ll link them here!